Month: June 2007

Another day older today. Helen made me breakfast – sausages, bacon, mushrooms – which we ate on the balcony overlooking Oxford Street. I have been having a completely self-indugent day, watching DVDs and playing on my notebook. Almost too lazy to post a blog entry! I figure I’ll type something up to mark the day.

Tim and Anna and kids should be arriving from Tokyo, so the evening may be structured around bottles of champagne in their hotel room. Just a guess.

Helen has taken me to Yorkshire for an early birthday weekend. We are staying at a place called “The Devonshire Arms” near Bolton Abbey – a beautiful ruined abbey. The hotel is great! There are two heli-pads, and throughout the day choppers buzz down like giant metal gnats to drop off a fresh batch of gourmets for the restaurant. We wanted to get out of London to soak up some nature. I guess you can still call thousands of years of farmed land “nature”, can’t you?

We went for a long walk – over 20 kilometers over moors and farms, and I am now sunburnt as hell. The skeletal remains of ancient ruined buildings were languidly picked over by the weekend hikers as we ambled the day away.

Chopsticks are great – until you get to that last bit of food at the bottom of the bowl that is. Then you’re left trying to turn a pair of round sticks into a spoon. They’re not so good with soup, or steaks. Maybe the satisfaction of eating with chopsticks is simply the extra effort needed to get food to mouth without detouring to table.